Socket
Compliance Engineering Lead at Socket
Role overview
An at-a-glance view of the facts included with this Compliance Engineering Lead at Socket listing.
- Company
- Socket
- Location
- Remote, United States
- Work arrangement
- Remote
- Employment type
- Full-time
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Role overview
This job description has been rewritten in fresh language using the facts in the listing. Source credit and original listing details are available below.
Socket is hiring a full-time Compliance Engineering Lead for a remote role in the United States. The company builds tools that help developers and security teams find, audit, and manage open-source code; it says thousands of organizations use its product. Socket has raised $125 million and was founded by Feross Aboukhadijeh, an open-source maintainer.
Reporting to the CISO, you will own the compliance program as an engineered system, including SOC 2 Type II, the path to ISO 27001 certification, risk and vendor programs, and customer-facing assurance materials. The role emphasizes building and maintaining automated evidence pipelines and control monitoring, and includes deciding whether to keep, replace, or build upon the current compliance platform. You will also hire and lead an initial customer trust teammate focused on security questionnaires, RFPs, and contract security reviews with Legal.
The role will help determine Socket’s approach to AI assurance, including whether and how to address ISO/IEC 42001, AIUC-1, the EU AI Act, and the NIST AI Risk Management Framework. The interview process includes a Talent Team conversation, an interview with the CISO, a working session on control automation and evidence pipelines, cross-functional interviews with Engineering and Go-to-Market, a debrief, and a decision and offer.
Socket lists market-competitive salary bands, equity, health coverage for employees and families at 99% coverage, flexible time off, holidays and a winter shutdown, paid parental leave, and a remote-first environment with quarterly team off-sites.
Role at a glance: Lead Socket’s compliance engineering program, including SOC 2, ISO 27001, automation, risk management, and customer assurance, reporting to the CISO.
Responsibilities mentioned in the listing
- Own SOC 2 Type II end to end, including the observation window, auditor relationship, audit scope, controls, evidence pipeline, and customer-facing report.
- Lead Socket through ISO 27001 certification by defining scope and the ISMS, conducting a gap assessment and internal audit, preparing the organization, and maintaining the ISMS after certification.
- Build and maintain automated evidence collection from systems including GCP, GitHub, the identity provider, MDM, and ticketing; develop scheduled control monitoring that detects drift and reduce recurring manual work.
- Run the risk program and maintain a risk register that informs leadership decisions; partner with the external security partner on vendor tiering, reviews, and renewal cadence.
- Own the customer-facing assurance program, including launching and maintaining a trust portal and creating an artifact library to reduce enterprise questionnaire volume.
- Assess AI assurance frameworks and regulations, including ISO/IEC 42001, AIUC-1, the EU AI Act, and the NIST AI Risk Management Framework, and advise on commitments and sequencing.
- Own the compliance platform decision, including evaluating the current platform and making the case for building compliance capabilities in-house where appropriate.
Qualifications stated in the listing
- Personally accountable for at least two complete SOC 2 Type II cycles, including auditor relationships, scoping, evidence, and findings; able to explain a failed control and how it was corrected.
- Experience taking an organization through ISO 27001 certification or managing an ISMS through surveillance audits; understands the difference between an operational ISMS and documentation prepared only for an audit.
- Able to build and maintain automations that work with services, and inclined to use scheduled jobs instead of recurring manual reminders; a software engineering background is not required.
- Hands-on experience with Drata, Vanta, or a comparable compliance platform, with informed views on where such tools help and where they can create only the appearance of control.
- Sound judgment in prioritizing genuine control risks against auditor preferences, and strong writing for auditors, enterprise security reviewers, engineers, and executives.
- Willingness to take ownership of unassigned work across Security, Engineering, Legal, and Go-to-Market.
- Experience in a remote, fast-moving environment where priorities change and the program is not fully defined.
- Preferred: exposure to AI governance frameworks such as ISO/IEC 42001, the NIST AI Risk Management Framework, or the EU AI Act; experience at a security vendor or another company subject to heightened customer scrutiny; contract security review with Legal; or in-house compliance automation experience.
Full details from the source listing
About Us
Socket helps devs and security teams ship faster by cutting out security busywork. Thousands of orgs use Socket to safely find, audit, and manage open source code. Our customers - from Anthropic to xAI, and Figma to Vercel - love Socket (just check out their tweets to see for yourself!)
Founded by Feross Aboukhadijeh, a long-time open source maintainer with software downloaded over a billion times a month, Socket has raised $125M in funding from top angels, operators, and security leaders.
About the Role
We are hiring a Compliance Engineering Lead to own compliance as an engineered system rather than a calendar of reminders.
Socket sells to security teams. Our customers ask harder questions than most buyers ask, and they are right to. That means our SOC 2 Type II, our path to ISO 27001, our risk and vendor programs, and the assurance artifacts we put in front of enterprise buyers all have to be genuinely well run, not merely present. The credibility of what we sell depends on it.
This is a foundational role, and it is deliberately an engineering role. The person we want does not manage compliance by chasing people for screenshots. They write code against APIs, build control tests that run on a schedule and fail loudly, and treat evidence collection as a pipeline with an owner and an SLA. You will own the compliance platform decision, including whether the platform we use today is the right one. If your answer is that we should build more of it ourselves, make that case.
You will report directly to the CISO, own the compliance program end to end, and hire and lead your first teammate, a customer trust hire focused on security questionnaires, RFPs, and contract security review with Legal. You will shape what GRC at Socket becomes.
What You'll Do
Own SOC 2 Type II end to end. Run the observation window, the auditor relationship, and the evidence pipeline behind both. Scope the audit and make sure the controls we describe are the controls that actually run. You own the report our customers read.
Take Socket through ISO 27001 certification. Define the scope and the ISMS, run the gap assessment and internal audit, prepare the organization and get us certified. Enterprise customers are asking for this now. Then keep the ISMS alive as something the company uses rather than something the auditor visits.
Make evidence collection continuous, automated, and boring. Write and maintain automation that pulls evidence directly from the systems of record: GCP, GitHub, our identity provider, MDM, ticketing. Build control monitoring that alerts on drift the day it happens instead of surfacing it the week before an audit. Every recurring manual task you inherit is a candidate for deletion.
Turn risk management and vendor risk into working programs. Maintain a risk register that reflects the risks we actually carry and that leadership uses when making decisions. In partnership with our external security partner, run third party risk with real tiering, real reviews, and a renewal cadence that holds.
Own the customer-facing assurance surface. Launch and maintain our trust portal, and build the library of artifacts that answers enterprise buyers before they send a spreadsheet. Measure your success by how much questionnaire load disappears, not by how quickly it gets processed.
Scope our AI assurance posture. Our customers are shipping AI systems and so are we. Evaluate what matters: ISO/IEC 42001, emerging AI agent assurance standards such as AIUC-1, the EU AI Act, and the NIST AI Risk Management Framework. Inform which of these to commit to, in what order, and what it would take. This is open ground and you will help decide what Socket does here.
What You'll Bring
You have personally owned at least two full SOC 2 Type II cycles as the accountable person. Not contributed to them. Owned them, including the auditor relationship, the scoping arguments, the evidence, and the findings. You can describe a control that failed, why, and what you changed so it stopped failing.
ISO 27001 depth. You have taken an organization through certification or run an ISMS through surveillance audits, and you know the difference between an ISMS that works and a binder that satisfies an auditor.
You build automations. Comfortable building and maintaining automations against services. You can operate with GCP, GitHub, Iru and other reaching for a scheduled job before a recurring calendar reminder. You do not need to be a software engineer by training. You do need to be someone who automates.
Clear opinions about compliance platforms. Hands-on experience with Drata, Vanta, or similar, and specific views on where these tools create leverage and where they create the appearance of control.
The judgment to prioritize. You can tell the difference between a control gap that represents real risk and one that represents an auditor's formatting preference, and you spend the company's time accordingly.
Writing that holds up in front of four audiences. Auditors, enterprise security reviewers, engineers, and executives.
The instinct to step toward unowned problems, including the unglamorous seams between Security, Engineering, Legal, and Go-to-Market. Compliance at a company our size lives in those seams.
Experience in a remote, fast-moving environment where priorities shift and nobody hands you a fully defined program.
Nice to Have:
Exposure to AI governance frameworks (ISO/IEC 42001, NIST AI RMF, EU AI Act); experience at a security vendor or another company held to a higher bar by its own customers; contract security review alongside Legal; having built compliance automation in-house rather than buying it.
Our Interview Process
Informational with a member of our Talent Team
Hiring Manager interview with our CISO
Working session: walk us through a control you automated, and design an evidence pipeline with us
Cross-functional interviews with Engineering and Go-to-Market
Debrief
Decision and offer
Hiring is a big decision on both sides. Read more about our Hiring Philosophy and how we approach the process at Socket.
Benefits: Our benefits are crafted to support you and your family, so you can take care of what matters most and thrive in and outside of work. We offer:
Market competitive salary bands
Meaningful equity program
Comprehensive health benefits for you and your family (99% coverage)
Flexible time-off, holidays, and winter shutdown to rest & recharge
Paid parental leave
Remote-first, with quarterly team off-sites
At Socket, we
Pursue Excellence: We set ourselves apart by consistently delivering work of exceptional quality and distinction.
Move with urgency and focus: We prioritize swift, decisive action.
Think rigorously: We care about being right and it often takes reasoning from first principles to get there. We value alternative perspectives and have constructive discussions.
Trust and amplify: We overtrust, always assume good intent, and give specific feedback to help each other improve.
Feel a strong sense of ownership: We wear many hats and feel a strong sense of overall ownership of the company and we're non-territorial regarding our nominal domains.
Are customer obsessed: We relentlessly prioritize the needs of our customers, striving to exceed their expectations and delight them at every interaction.
